“Placing Equity Front and Center” for Teacher Education in a Time of Crisis

Introduction

Although equity-minded practitioners, scholars, and policymakers in the field of teacher education believed we were making slow but steady progress in educational parity, we find this certainty tested at a critical time in history. As this editorial was being finalized on June 29, 2023, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) was forced to respond to the ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard University and University of North Carolina (2023), declaring the pronouncement to strike down affirmative action and other racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions as “contrary to our collective efforts to build an educator workforce that is diverse and representative” (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education [AACTE], 2023, para. 1).

Affirmative action does not focus on specific quotas but rather on targeted goals to tackle past discrimination in a particular institution or in broader society through “good-faith efforts . . . to identify, select, and train potentially qualified men and women” (Feinberg, 2005, p. 272). Already plagued by a lack of representation of teachers of color in university educator preparation programs (AACTE, 2018) and U.S. classrooms (Hill-Jackson, 2017; National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2018), practitioners and scholars of teacher education sustain a collective gut punch as we ponder how the impactful work of equity in teacher education would continue in a politically polarized nation.

Essentially, equity means fairness and has a profoundly different definition from the term equality. Equality refers to treating each person the same; equity refers to resources based on need because everyone has different circumstances. Equity considers historical and sociopolitical factors that affect opportunities and experiences, and it designs policies and systems to meet the unique needs of others without giving an unfair advantage. (Pendall, 2022, para. 1)

The Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. decision (hereafter SFFA) effectively advanced a proposal of race-neutrality in college admissions, which threatens to roll back equity efforts that worked to ensure that college campuses reflect the nation’s demographic profile.

This editorial on equity in teacher education serves as the precis for the second of two special issues by the Journal of Teacher Education in recognition of the AACTE 75th anniversary. Even though teacher education leaders and researchers are not in much of a celebratory mood, this four-part editorial is timely and attempts to place equity center stage in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent challenge to race-conscious policies for college admissions and the potential impact to the field. First, it is important to review the long history of injustice that besieged Black people in the United States over four centuries. Political polarization, civil protests in response to the murders of Black citizens, the pandemic, and the demographic mismatch are turning points as they serve as a reminder of the rationale for the creation of affirmative action legislation. Second, we reconsider major cultural shifts since the start of the 21st century that impact teacher education specifically and education more broadly. Third, we highlight the promising remedies or advances in equity education. Fourth, and with reserved hope, we take stock of equity research for the field of teacher education and what remains to be done.

Lest We Forget: The Long Fight for Equity in the United States

The United States has used corrective legislation over our 400-year history to combat inequality as we strive to be a more perfect union. The Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments, also known as the three Reconstruction Amendments, added to the U.S. Constitution after the Civil War, were intended to establish civil rights for former enslaved people. By the end of the 19th century, the country regressed, the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ruling established that separate facilities for White and Black people were legal, and the rise of segregated schools and universities soon followed. Although the Brown v. Board of Topeka Education (1954) decision introduced the inadvertent fallout of the loss of Black communities (Pattillo, 2013) as well as a precipitous decline in teaching positions (Hill-Jackson, 2017) and principal jobs (Fenwick, 2022) for Black people, Brown ushered in a Civil Rights Movement that attempted to remedy approximately 350 years of educational deprivation and educational apartheid in the United States (Albritton, 2012; Butchart, 2016; Fairclough, 2000; Hill-Jackson, 2017). It was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s, several years after the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment leveraged the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to fight segregation, that many public schools and universities in the United States opened their doors to Black and other students of color, especially Indigenous and Latino/a students who, for generations, had also faced racism and inequitable schooling.

Despite hard-fought court battles across the 20th century, Nieto (2000) explains that school conditions across the United States “have been consistently, systematically, and disproportionately unequal and unfair,” and the major casualties have been those students who differ significantly in social class, race, ethnicity, native language, and gender from what is considered the “mainstream” (p. 181). Furthermore, Nieto (2000) chides leaders of schools and colleges of education who have not been guiltless onlookers:

On the contrary, despite recent attempts in teacher education programs across the country to include multicultural issues, many programs have been steeped in negative assumptions about diverse populations based on deficit theories. These theories include the perspective that students from nondominant groups are genetically or culturally inferior, or that they bring little of value to their education. In addition, teacher preparation programs have been characterized by a conservative ideology that emphasizes assimilation and the maintenance of the status quo. Placing the blame for student failure primarily on students and their families has freed schools of education from considering how their own policies and practices in teacher education have colluded to perpetuate academic failure for those students who differ from the majority. (p. 181)

Amid the dominating mainstream ideology in U.S. schools and universities, these education spaces also serve as depots of democracy to inculcate such values as respect, integrity, service, and self-determination. The fallacy perpetrated against equity is that it is not an American value and provides cover for extremists who wish to push agendas that are contrary to the nation’s aspirations and values. The reality is that equity is used as an antidote to unchecked biases when human refrain will not suffice. Equity is a compendium of egalitarian ideologies, people-first language, strategic policies, and intentional practices to ensure that the entity (in this case, understood as the United States) lives up to its democratic principles.

Ideally, all nations and its institutions should function without the mandate of affirmative action interventions as the very presence of government intervention signals that the United States has not secured democracy for all. But until that day, equity must be performed in the full light of day with calculated precision to validate the basic humanity of all people. Throughout the history of the United States, there has been a sluggish but relentless ambition to achieve fair outcomes for all citizens followed by a stupefying retreat of cultural progress.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Major Changes in U.S. Education and Society Since 2000

The topic of equity in education has grown exponentially since Nieto’s (2000) seminal work titled “Placing equity front and center” was published. Nieto and McDonough (2011) then wrote “Placing equity front and center revisited” where they once again considered progress made and action needed in teacher preparation. In fact, given the ascendency of matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education and society since then, no self-respecting teacher education program, book, or article has not highlighted the issue of equity in the intervening years. However, since 2011, some major events in the sociopolitical landscape have directly impacted teachers as well as teacher education and K-12 education. There has been backsliding on many of these initial initiatives, a reminder that major changes are often followed by a retreat, or as the old saw goes, “two steps forward, one step back.”

The first is extreme political polarization, fueled and amplified by rightwing individuals and groups that propagate “fake news,” bots, and gaslighting. Bans and proposed bans on teaching about race, gender identity, sexuality and related forms of diversity, and the sometimes violent disruptions at local school board meetings also directly impact the lives of students, practicing teachers, and teacher educators. Curriculum nullification and efforts to indict teachers (The Editorial Board, 2022) also threaten the progress made by social justice and multicultural educators that have taken decades to build. Calls for more instruction on critical pedagogy, media literacy, and a culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) both in PK-12 and higher education are commonly suggested solutions (Mirra et al., 2021; also see Nieto & López, in press).

Second, the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, was a major flashpoint resulting in significant protests in both the United States and around the globe. The protests, significant in scope, size, and urgency, also initiated a wave of public statements from corporations, other businesses, non-profit organizations, public and private schools, and higher education institutions, about their commitments to anti-racism, institutional restructuring, and strategies for change. Some schools discontinued the practice of having police officers in schools, and many have faced questions about how to address racism and support Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) (Sawchuk, 2021a, 2021b).

Third, by March 2020, Covid-19 had begun its widespread influence on our lives. The pandemic that shut down the world emphasized what we already knew about the digital divide, that is, that many low-income and BIPOC students and their families did not have access to technology and home internet services (Stelitano et al., 2020). The pandemic also brought into sharp focus the need for schools to address social emotional learning (SEL), another contested political issue in the recent past.

Fourth, the 21st century also marshaled a dramatic shift in the demographic landscape among PK-12 learners and teachers. The U.S. teacher workforce is still predominantly White although it has dropped from 84% White in 2000 to 79% in 2018 (NCES, 2018), whereas the K-12 student population in the United States has moved in the opposite direction; in 2020, the percent of White students fell to 46%, while BIPOC students make up 56% of school-aged children (NCES, 2022).

This demographic mismatch between public school educators and the students they serve is a proven barrier to academic achievement and attainment for students of color. When educators are racially and ethnically diverse, students of color have improved performance on standardized assessments in reading and mathematics in certain grades and are more likely to be placed in gifted education, graduate from high school, and be admitted to and enroll in college. Moreover, numerous research studies show that benefits accrue to all students when they are in schools with a diverse corps of educators. (AACTE, 2023, para. 3)

Political polarization, civil protests in response to the murders of Black citizens, the pandemic, and the demographic mismatch between teachers and students are part of the lead-up to the recoil in social justice education as sentiment on Black and White relations are strained (Gallup, 2023).

Taking Stock [or Where Do We Go From Here?]

Despite the many changes that have taken place in education since the start of the 21st century, so much of what equity researchers leaders proposed years ago still rings true today. For example, Nieto (2000) wrote the following:

The field was in its infancy in 1980 when I taught my first course in multicultural education, but it was already clear to me that much of what took place in classrooms and schools in the name of diversity was little more than window dressing . . . I was beginning to see that most approaches to multicultural education avoided asking difficult questions related to access, equity and social justice. (p. 180)

While it is certainly true that the field now has a much more robust research base, as well as many excellent resources and myriad examples of curricula and pedagogy that tackle the same questions raised in the 2000 and 2011 pieces, sadly, the landscape has not changed as much as we might have hoped. Teachers and schools are still reluctant to address questions of inequity and inequality in schools and society. In addition, nagging and persistent problems concerning the lack of diversity among teachers, teacher educators, and the professoriate in general, and in the pre-K-12, and teacher preparation curriculum and pedagogy also persist. Consequently, whether we call it anti-racist education, social justice education, or diversity, equity, access, and inclusion, a name change alone will not change student outcomes.

The eight articles in this issue address a range of equity-related topics for teachers and provide us with the needed hope that over time more and more teachers and schools will have the drive, commitment, and tools to teach and relate to children and families with equity at the heart of their practice. In the first two articles, the authors address the reliance on dispositions to educate and evaluate both preservice and inservice teachers. Bryant Jensen and Erin Whiting in “Becoming Equitable Educators: Practicality in Measuring Teacher Dispositions” raise the question of validity when measuring “equity dispositions” under the premise that we cannot teach what cannot be measured. They offer a “validity framework” for consideration in the use of teacher dispositions as an evaluative tool, whereas Robert Bullough in ‘Rethinking Dispositions in Teaching and Teacher Education: Virtue and the Manners of Democracy as a Way of Life” notes shortcomings and dilemmas in the use of dispositions and suggests instead using a framework of “manners of democracy” which includes attuned listening and evidential discernment.

Three of the articles selected for this issue focus on supporting the development of equity lenses of preservice teachers. In “The Intersection of Equity Pedagogy and Technology Integration in Preservice Teacher Education: A Scoping Review,” Lauren Weisberg and Kara Dawson conducted a literature review about how equity pedagogy and technology integration intersect in preservice programs, under the premise that the critical use of and learning about technology is directly relevant to being an equitable educator. In the research of Allison Firestone, Rebecca Cruz, and Darcie Massey and their article “Developing an Equity Centered Practice: Teacher Study Groups in the Preservice Context,” the authors consider the impact of preservice teacher study groups to develop equity-centered practices during classroom practicums. Finally, in “Pushing Through: Developing Teacher Identity Under Times of Crisis,” Stephanie Sanders-Smith and her co-authors use Bourdieusian theory to address how the COVID-19 pandemic affected five teacher candidates who worked with a racially, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse group of young children.

The final three articles focus on inservice teachers and equity pedagogy. In “When Shutting the Door Won’t Do: Teaching with the Spectre of Community Backlash: Implications for Teacher Education,” Rachel Ranschaert uses discourse analysis to interpret how news of teachers being disciplined for teaching about injustice impacts the pedagogical decisions of a group of newly licensed teachers. It is abundantly clear that schools, communities, and teacher education courses need to prepare and protect teachers and students from the increasingly violent reactions of some parents and community members to issues of diversity and inclusion at school board meetings and other venues. They also must arm teachers not with guns but instead with the ability to address the kinds of changes needed to prepare students for our current sociopolitical reality and demographics. Until that happens, in another 10, 20, or 30 years, we may be returning to the same question of when and how to “place equity front and center” in teacher education. In the article titled “Mapping How Teachers Become Culturally Responsive,” Hillary Parkhouse and her co-authors present a carefully designed 2-year professional development study. The article provides a road map to what it might take to change teachers’ practices related to CRP pedagogy. Finally, in “The Development of Collaborative Advocacy: Dialogic Engagements,” Catherine Michener and Sora Suh document the shift of five teachers who work in a diverse sanctuary city in New Jersey. The authors use a dialogic lens between students, educators, research, policies, and societal discourses to understand how teachers’ advocacy develops over time.

Summary: On Equity in Teacher Education

The complicated nature of equity in teacher education considering the recent SFFA decision is explored in four major themes in this editorial. First, let us not forget our long history of de jure discrimination in our nation’s schools and universities as it reveals that the fight for equity has been protracted. Hindsight is instructive, and time will demonstrate that teacher education’s turn to embrace equity places the field on the right side of history. The SFFA decision is an anti-equity decision and therefore antithetical to the basic tenets of teacher education. Second, we note that many cultural crises of the 21st century (political polarization, civil protests in response to the murders of Black citizens, the pandemic, and the demographic mismatch between students and teachers) occurred simultaneously with an increasing backlash to social justice education. Third, the field of teacher education has responded to social justice blowback with best practices to stem inequality—racial literacy, socio-emotional learning, and a focus on learning outcomes—which are proven curricular supports for learners and teachers in our PK-12 schools. Finally, as the authors take stock on our civil rights journey, we are buoyed by the realization that the research in equity for teacher education continues to expand and mature with robust scholarship as demonstrated in this volume.

As we “place equity front and center” amid the crisis of the SFFA decision, one thing is clear: The field of teacher education must remain steadfast in our commitment to uphold the tenets of equity even as the SFFA decision has dealt it a devasting blow. The leadership of AACTE (2023) doubles down on a commitment to equity for teacher education and, in recognition of their 75th anniversary, get the last word on this matter:

Given the nation’s history of racially exclusionary laws and policies, the contemporary research base that supports diversity, and the need for continued social progress, AACTE affirms its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as core to our mission and the work of our institutional members. AACTE urges its members and partners to continue identifying and using creative and effective institutional measures to advance racial and ethnic diversity in educator preparation programs, the education professions, and the education professoriate. (para. 4)